Meghan's Dragon

by E. M. Foner

  “Did you just put the whammy on me?” the young man asked incredulously. He felt like he’d been doused with a bucket of cold water, or maybe dropped in an icy lake.

  “It’s time for our show,” Meghan said, trying to sound like nothing important had happened between them. She turned and followed Laitz back towards the stage.

  “You just wait and see what happens next time you’re feeling friendly,” Bryan called after her. Then he remembered he was doing the lighting for the dragon duel and broke into an evil smile.

  Chapter 38

  The audience oohed as a blue dragon, created by Meghan, materialized from the swirling dust. The illusion grew increasingly solid as Bryan amped up the intensity of the focused fireball he was maintaining in the hooded section behind the slit at the back of the three-sided enclosure.

  “It’s flying,” a child in the crowd cried out as the blue dragon began to beat its wings, moving in a small circle within the space sheltered from the breeze. Then a larger, yellow dragon entered from the side as the blue flew past. The younger and more excitable members of the audience screamed warnings to the smaller dragon.

  The head of Meghan’s dust dragon turned on its long neck and looked back at the yellow, just as Laitz’s creation opened its maw and let out a stream of red dust. Bryan further increased the intensity of his light orb, causing all of the colors to glow brighter. The stream of illusory fire missed the blue dragon as it folded its wings and dove. The yellow dragon stayed on its tail, and for several laps around the open booth, the dragons exchanged jets of flame, always with the large yellow in pursuit of the blue.

  Then Laitz caused his dragon to shift its strategy and occupy the center of the airspace, where it hovered with strong wing beats while waiting for a chance to corner Meghan’s tiring blue. Audience members who weren’t queued up at the kegs for beer during the intermission offered expert combat advice to their blue favorite, which was especially useful as none of them had ever seen a dragon duel before. The red flames spouting from Meghan’s dragon were growing weaker as she ran out of dust to release, and Laitz’s yellow opened its mouth wide and darted forward.

  At that instant, a giant green dragon, twice as large again as Meghan’s blue, dove into the scene. It obliterated Laitz’s yellow with a gout of real fire that incinerated the very dust of which it was formed. Then the newcomer flew directly at the blue and hovered above it, wings beating in unison as it tried to entwine its neck with that of the smaller dragon.

  “It’s a mating flight,” somebody called out from the audience, and parents covered the eyes of their smaller children. Then the light source went out, dousing the illusion. The children begged their parents for coins to throw onto the stage.

  As the men assigned as stagehands for the night quickly pulled down the sides of the booth to prepare the stage for the second half of The Stolen Twin, Laitz helped a somewhat dazed Meghan find her bearings.

  “Pretty exciting for a first performance,” he told her. “I’m not crazy about your husband going off script like that, but it worked. I couldn’t have maintained the lighting, a dragon, and thrown real fire like that myself. He’s got a lot of talent.”

  “Where’d he go?” Meghan asked, coming back to her senses and realizing that Bryan was nowhere to be seen.

  “He’s probably out in the audience trying to get a good spot to watch the second act,” Laitz told her. “There’s a scene at the end that always brings down the house when the free twin offers herself as a prize to the warrior who rescues her sister.”

  Meghan thought for a moment about finding and berating Bryan over his quickly broken promise. Then she remembered his hot breath on her neck as she turned her head to avoid his kiss, and the strange feeling she had when his green dragon had enveloped hers on the stage. Instead, she remained in the wings to watch the second act.

  Chapter 39

  “A toast,” Rowan shouted, pounding the table with his giant fist.

  A dozen conversations came to a sudden halt, and members of the troupe rapidly refilled their tankards with whatever they were drinking. Bryan noticed that five of the men, including Hardol and Jomar, were standing at carefully spaced intervals around the area of tables that had been set out under the night sky. A sort of light yellow haze extended between the sentries to form a perimeter wall.

  “To Juliana and Nesta,” cried one of the few bachelors with the troupe, and a laugh went up as the revelers took a quick drink. Rowan glowered at the player, but the twins took the compliment in stride, inclining their identical blonde heads towards the young gallant.

  “I was going to say, to the return of the prodigal son and the romantic young couple he brought with him,” Rowan finally made the toast, and then drained his tankard dry.

  “Speech, speech,” several of the troupe shouted out jokingly, but Laitz wasn’t one to let an opportunity for attention go to waste.

  “Since you insist,” he declared, hopping up on his chair and striking a pose. His harlequin suit would have made him the center of attention in any other crowd, but the players were used to both his costume and his manner. Laitz raised his voice and continued as if they were all eagerly awaiting his words.

  “First, I’d like to thank Rowan for being smart enough to take me back,” he declared, drawing a series of hoots and catcalls. “Second, I’d like to thank Meghan and Bryan for making tonight’s illusion a great success. They’ve only been at it for two weeks now, and I’ll be surprised if they don’t surpass me by the end of the season.”

  Meghan blushed as people turned to look at her and Bryan. She knew that when Laitz said “they,” he was really referring to the stranger she had brought from Dark Earth, who once again had become a mystery to her. Was he serious about his feelings, or was he just inflamed by watching the twins and willing to turn to the most convenient woman, the one with whom he shared a tent.

  “On the subject of our new members, I’m sure you’ve all heard the rumors,” Rowan announced suddenly. His voice cut through the laughs and renewed conversations of the players who were ignoring the rest of Laitz’s ad-libbed speech. “I don’t have to tell any of you that troupe business is none of the king’s business, but I want to remind you that a denial is as good as an admission in the ears of a Seeker. If anybody suspicious asks you about new members in the troupe, don’t deny it or they’ll know we’re hiding something. Something else, I mean,” Rowan corrected himself, drawing a big laugh from the troupe. “Either answer without lying or don’t say anything at all. The Seekers know that they have no friends among traveling players.”

  Chapter 40

  “Stand down,” Chester shouted, drawing his sword as he moved between Meghan and the soldiers sent to arrest her. “I intend to make Elstan my wife.”

  Despite the fact that everybody over the age of eight knew the story of the boy who had disguised himself as a girl in an attempt to slip through the lines and bring help, the audience let out a collective sigh of empathy.

  “We can’t do that, Captain,” one of the men replied. “The baron will have our heads.”

  “I’ll have your heads if you try to stop us.”

  “Let them take me,” Meghan cried, attempting to make her voice as low as possible. It was just about right for an adolescent boy. “I’ve failed my family and everybody who depends on me. I deserve to die.”

  “Stand down,” Chester repeated, pointing his sword at the men who were beginning to spread out to encircle the pair. “You’ve followed me through eight years of war, yet you would circle now to stab me in the back?”

  “He’s mad,” declared the soldier who had spoken earlier to the others. “Ulric, we’ll keep him engaged while you grab the witch who has stolen our captain’s heart.”

  With that, all six men drew their weapons and advanced on the captain in a widening arc, while he backed away, keeping Meghan behind him. Realizing that the uneven odds could only result in one conclusion, Chester drew a dirk with his free hand, and with a cr
y of anguish, he threw himself at his men. In a matter of seconds, he parried several blows, ran the leader through with his sword, and stabbed his dirk in another man’s chest. But he received a wound on the leg and limped heavily, struggling to retain his balance. The remaining four men surrounded the captain, who kept turning like a caged animal, his sword extended in front of him. Then Meghan leaped towards one of the soldiers and stabbed him in the side.

  “Elstan!” the captain shouted as the wounded soldier turned on the girl. He ignored the three remaining swordsmen and charged the man attacking Meghan, thrusting his sword through him. As he struggled to free the gory blade, two of the remaining soldiers fell on Chester and the third grabbed Meghan.

  “Captain!” Meghan cried, and with a burst of superhuman strength, the captain left his dirk in one man’s heart, slashed the other, and then brought the pommel of his sword down on the head of the man holding the girl. Fake blood released from hidden bladders covered them all at this point, and Chester dropped heavily to his knees, putting his head against Meghan’s stomach.

  “I would have slain every man in the army to protect you,” Chester declared, letting his sword fall to the stage. “They’ve killed me, but let me taste your lips just once and I’ll go to the afterlife in peace.”

  As the musicians launched into opening notes of “The Ballad of Elstan,” Meghan turned her head toward the audience and made her tragic confession, “But I’m a boy.” The music swelled, and the players all remained frozen in their positions until the coins began to rain down on the stage. Then they shrugged off their fatal wounds and stood up for a collective bow, after which they began gathering the coins, which included a number of silvers.

  “Don’t go away!” Jomar shouted, his magically amplified voice cutting through the applause. “We’ll be playing The Duke’s Uprising against Brom’s troupe on this very stage after the break, followed by Laitz’s Dueling Dragons and a second showing of The Stolen Twin this evening.”

  Meghan stumbled from the stage exhausted, clutching at the pendant under her boy’s doublet for strength. She couldn’t believe how much acting in front of an audience took out of her, and she hoped that she would have enough energy left for Laitz’s show. More than anything, she wondered why Bryan wasn’t there to support her. Then she spotted him out on the stage, picking up coins with both hands.

  Chapter 41

  “You should eat more,” Bryan informed Meghan on the last night of the festival. He licked his spoon clean after polishing off the kitchen wagon leftovers she had procured for him. “You wouldn’t need to squander the magical reserves from your pendant all the time if you had more fuel in your stomach.”

  “If I ate like you, I’d look like I was carrying a child and then I couldn’t play Elstan,” she retorted. “Hey, that’s an idea.”

  “A bad idea. Give me your pendant and I’ll put a charge in it for you. I’ve got so much energy these days that I have to fight myself not to throw a fireball at the moon.”

  Meghan was so tired that she handed over her pendant without thinking about what she was doing. Before she could snatch it back, the bones in Bryan’s hand suddenly became visible as the glow from the intense magical energy generated in his grasp penetrated his flesh. There was a loud crack, and the light went out like a candle doused by a tub of water.

  “Oops,” Bryan said, examining the pendant in the dim light from their campfire. “I think it broke.”

  “You broke it?” Meghan howled in disbelief, grabbing for the chain. “That pendant is the only thing I have from before I lost my memory. It can’t break.”

  Bryan mumbled an apology as the girl examined the piece that remained attached to the chain.

  “It still holds my magic.” She breathed a sigh of relief and kindled a small light to examine the pendant closely. “It’s lighter somehow, but the dragon emblem that was almost worn away looks new. How did you do that?”

  “Uh, it’s lighter because of this,” Bryan said, showing her the piece of pendant that remained in his hand. It looked like a master craftsman had carefully sawed through the heirloom, producing a duplicate that was half as thick as the original. “It sort of split in two.”

  “Let me see that,” Meghan demanded, snatching the piece from Bryan’s hand and holding it next to her pendant. “It’s not broken. It was originally made as two pieces and held together by binding magic. There’s something inscribed on the hidden surface of both halves,” she added excitedly. Then came a long pause before she admitted in disappointment, “I can’t read it. The inscription must be in a secret mage language I haven’t learned.”

  Bryan leaned in close and casually created a small illumination orb that cast a bright light on the engravings. “It’s English,” he said in surprise.

  Meghan shook her head in irritation at the untranslatable word.

  “The language I spoke on Dark Earth.”

  “That’s impossible. What does it say?”

  In Dragon’s Lair, beneath the tower stair, your path is laid bare, the dragon’s tooth is there.

  “It’s a riddle,” Meghan proclaimed unnecessarily. “Dragon’s Lair must be a castle if it has a tower, but I’ve never heard of it. Surely there’s more to all that text than four short lines.”

  “The rest of it isn’t English,” Bryan admitted. “It reminds me of something, though. Wait, I’ve got it. I needed to tie a tie once for a funeral, and my dad told me to look in his old Boy Scout manual because he didn’t remember how to do it either.”

  “How can you tie a tie? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It’s like a scarf for men. Nobody wears them anymore, except for job hunters and salesmen. Anyway, I think all of those little hieroglyphics are showing the steps for making a really complicated knot.”

  “How could I have missed that,” Meghan exclaimed, staring at the two inscribed halves of the pendant. “It’s instructions for untying a magical knot of concealment and protection. I’ll bet we’ll find it below the tower stairs of the castle.”

  “So I did good?” Bryan could smell the herbal-infused soap that Meghan had started using on her hair, and he snuck his left arm around her narrow shoulders.

  “Don’t bother me now. I have to memorize this and start practicing so I’ll be able to do it quickly. The tower is at the center of every castle’s defenses, and it’s manned by soldiers day and night. We may come upon the castle as soon as we start traveling. I just don’t know all their names.”

  Bryan stood up abruptly and stalked off in the direction of the wagons to see if the older men were drinking beer.

  “Thank you,” Meghan called after his vanishing back when she realized he was going. She didn’t understand why he couldn’t just sit quietly while she worked, and she missed the warmth that seemed to radiate from his body when they were together.

  “Eighteen steps,” Meghan complained to herself after counting the hand movements diagramed in the pendant. She crawled into the tent, secured the front flap, and began to practice.

  Chapter 42

  Taking down the stage took a little more time than erecting it, but the troupe was back on the road before lunch on the day after the northern festival concluded. The King’s Highway followed the river through a broad valley, and an ancient range of worn-down mountains encroaching on the river from both sides loomed out of the fog ahead. The native shaman walked along with Meghan and Bryan, giving them pointers about creating lifelike illusions.

  “I’m still confused about the whole dragon thing,” Bryan complained to Storm Bringer. “It seemed like half of the booths at the fair were selling stuff with images of dragons, but Meghan says that they’re really just mages who take dragon form.”

  “Bryan!” Meghan cried hoarsely. A week of performing Elstan had taken its toll, especially since the part forced her to lower her vocal register to sound more like a boy pretending to be a girl.

  “The young lady is correct,” the shaman informed Bryan. “But the dragon for
ms taken on by those powerful enough to make the transformation are real. A mage who dies while transformed leaves the skeleton of a dragon, not a human. My own people haven’t had a dragon in our midst for many generations, though there are several with the nations beyond the great river to the west. Our stories tell us that they were more numerous in the past, but new dragons stopped appearing many years ago, and the remaining dragons often fought to the death.”

  “Meghan said the scrolls tell the same story about dragons in Old Land,” Bryan said, ignoring the girl’s disgusted look. “Nobody else seems to talk about it much, though I’ve heard there are at least two dragons on the coast of New Land. If they’re so powerful, why don’t they rule as kings?”

  “Being a king has its drawbacks,” Laitz interjected. “For one thing, it ties you down to a court and all of the politics involved in running the kingdom. For another, it puts a huge target on your back for anybody else who wants to be king. And if you don’t have any children, it means that one slip can end your family’s rule.”

  “When a king dies without children, can anybody apply for the job?” Bryan asked.

  Laitz and the shaman exchanged a look that was becoming quite common amongst members of the troupe when engaged in conversation with Bryan. One moment he seemed wise beyond his years, the next he asked questions you’d expect from a six-year-old.

  “He’s joking,” Meghan said weakly, though that excuse had worn thin over the last two weeks. When Bryan began asking questions, the only way to stop him from making obvious mistakes was to change the subject. “What are those mountains ahead?”